Laser Control Chronicles
by Omnicat
Summary: Digitization: one part magic, three parts hard work by Yori and the rest of the laser control crew. Resistance: the only thinkable course of action when red once again swarms the system and takes Tron away from her.
1. 01 - Digitized

**Title:** Laser Control Chronicles

**Author:** Omnicat

**Unofficially Adapted From:** Steven Lisberger & co's _Tron_, Joseph Kosinski & co's _Tron: Legacy_, _Tron: Betrayal_, _Tron: Evolution_ and Charlie Bean & co's _Tron: Uprising_.

**Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge:** All of the above.

**Characters & Ships:** Yori x Tron, Clu, Rinzler, the Uprising cast, various plot-relevant OCs, and occasional appearances by Lora x Alan, Sam and Roy.

**Summary:** Digitization: one part magic, three parts hard work by Yori and the rest of the laser control crew. Resistance: the only thinkable course of action when red once again swarms the system and takes Tron away from her.

**Author's Note:** Vaguely AU for _Evolution_, because while I like the new characters it introduces, I prefer different versions of Tron and Quorra's backstory. Seriously, they have like three different canon versions each, depending on what part of the franchise you're looking at. _Wildly_ AU for _Uprising_, for the same reasons.

**II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

**01 – Digitized**

The underwater control center was bright and loud with activity when Yori, Visper and Anemone teleported in. A quick look around told Yori they were the last to arrive; the rest of the laser control crew was already busily calibrating pods, opening windows on their display panels, and otherwise preparing for the work ahead. The others must have still been in the nearby residential folder, dutifully awaiting Flynn's arrival, when the Call came. Yori had given up such piety long ago. Flynn's inability to A) schedule his visits with any regularity, and B) stick to the appointments he did schedule, was just another point of proof in the design he had sketched of himself when she first met him, in another system and another time.

He was later than projected _again_ today. But the crew's spirits were high, their laughter and exited voices ringing under the high dome of the Shiva laser control center. Yori felt the relief bring down her own energy cycling as well, and she smiled as she made her way to her workstation. Any tick of the User's absence was one too many these days, and every visit a cause for celebration.

"I wonder if Flynn will come see us again this time," Zava said to Quolli as the map on their shared screen lit up with energy readings one sector at a time. "It's been ages."

"The _User_ has better things to do with his time." Sei looked up from her own workstation only long enough to send her sisters a reproachful look. "We should consider ourselves blessed he deigns to visit our world at all."

Quolli huffed in annoyance, but Visper snorted. Sei was by far the most reverent out of the nine of them; Visper was definitely the least.

"Not this time, I don't think," Yori said in a more kindly tone of voice. "Tron has a lot of urgent business to discuss with him."

As if summoned, a pair of arms wrapped around her waist just as she made to ascend the steps to her pod. The sparse circuits they held brushed Yori's own, blazing a familiar greeting into her system, but she hadn't needed the confirmation. She would know those arms anywhere. Her code would melt into his any time.

"Yes I do," he said with a peck to her cheek. "And Clu hasn't been too happy either."

Bit looped around their heads to chime in: "No."

With a blissful smile that even Clu's perpetual crankiness couldn't dim, Yori pressed her cheek to Tron's and her back to his chest, pouring all her happy feelings into the open circuit between them as a 'hello to you too'.

Ni and Teck giggled into their hands, but Visper loudly announced: "Look operative, programs, Security's here."

Sei rolled her eyes, but there was no real sting in her words. "Hurray, we can digitize without fear of errors!"

"We will once Tron finishes bug-checking the boss," Pum teased.

Two snorts and a "Ha!" arose in perfect unison.

Smiling without a pixel of remorse, Tron gave Yori's sides one last squeeze before stepping back. He gave Bit a playful bop. "Come on Bit, let's get out of their way."

"Yes!" Bit chirped, and flew up to zip around in circles near the escape hatch at the top of the dome.

Feet apart and hands clasped behind his back, Tron took his customary place in the middle of the walkway leading from the teleporter at the edge of the room to the escape pods arranged around their emergency launch chute in the center, at the perfectly calculated halfway point between zapping back to the Arcade from whence they'd come and shooting up to the surface of the Sea and the Portal high above them. The laser control crew could not err – must not and _did_ not err – and should they err regardless, there was nothing a security program could do to fix it. The real reason Tron so often came down to oversee Flynn's arrival was Yori, and everyone knew it. But that didn't mean he let the opportunity to monitor the Shiva sisters' operations go to waste.

Yori, in turn, settled into her pod and looked around. "Everybody set?"

A chorus of affirmatives rang out from her team in their pods, at their panels and in front of their screens. All processes in place, all equipment online, blinking and humming in anticipation. Flynn was waiting for them.

"Alright, here goes."

Yori put her hands on the energy panels to either side of her, opening the circuit between herself and the laser control center. With every inhale and exhale, every cycle of energy, she let her mind fall deeper into operational patterns, her focus simultaneously narrowing and expanding. Her sense of self grew until she was 50% User-styled shell, 10% sister-subroutines, and 40% structure and contents of the laser control center itself, pressed in on all sides by the Sea.

Like this, she could almost see through the fabric of the world. Could almost see the lines of code, the energy streams, the data flow, see the distinction between LoraB the Creator and End User Flynn, see the tiny imperfections, smoothed out or remaining, of years of tweaks and edits and updates, see the scars in the code that bound them together, left 278 cycles ago when Uxi-SHV-20905 derezzed in a gridbug attack and End User Flynn turned SirenAnemone into Anemone-SHV-20905 to replace her; left when Zava-SHV-20905 derezzed on the MCP's game grid 360 cycles ago and her functions were reinstalled by Creator LoraB, animated by a new spirit and equipped with a partial copy of Quolli-SHV-20905's operational memories and settings; left when Rix-SHV-20905 derezzed due to a faulty update and User VeraWeissEncom wrote Pum-SHV-20905 to replace her 504 cycles ago.

Tron-JA-307020 was the only foreign process in the room, and SHV-20905 – Yori – would have swallowed him up and spit out his fragmented code into the merciless virus of the Sea had he been anyone else.

Voice thick with electronic buzz, she declared: "Shiva laser, activate."

And it was so.

One by one, the many energy regulation modules floating around the Portal came to life, the beams of their energy lines spearing the waters. Through the six massive, bent glass panels making up the dome of the control center, they could see the lights come down all around them, like light trails left by tank blasts, straight down until they bent at a sharp angle toward the control center and connected below the programs' line of sight.

Zava and Quolli, their hands also pressed to their stations, counted down the beams with identical, static-laden voices. Quolli's circuits flashed when the first one ignited; Zava's when the last connected.

"Energy levels stabilized. Power regulation online," Zava and Quolli announced in unison.

"Is the aperture clear, Flynn?" Teck asked aloud. Her voice did not echo as it would have done in the old system, but the platform she stood on was lit with circuits as bright, intricate and colorful as Encom 511 had been, and the powers coursing through her could be felt in every corner of the room.

For a long moment, they waited, breath caught in everyone's throats no matter how often they had done this before.

Then, booming:

YES

"Aperture clear," Teck said, grinning hugely. "Proceed, programs."

Sei pressed a hand to the energy panel in her workstation. "Laser active in 3... 2... 1... now! Scan commencing."

"Gathering data," Anemone, Pum and Visper chorused, hands on their energy panels.

A holographic projector blinked to life. Pixel by pixel, Flynn's image appeared, surrounded by statistics and readings. The trio's eyes were glazed over and the movement of their hands across their control panels was robotic from the strain of processing so much data at such speeds. But much of the information they needed was already stored in the team's memory from previous digitizations, which sped up the process.

Their gazes cleared before long, and after a last few decisive taps to their control panels, all three of them nodded to Sei, who declared: "Scan complete. Remodulating laser output... and... go ahead."

"Now dematerializing target," Yori said. On the other side of the room, in her own pod, Ni mimicked Yori's pose and joined the center circuit. They reached out to each other as one – their code connected – Pum, Visper and Anemone added their computational power...

Yori processed a quick, faint impression of Tron's eyes on her, bright with pride and love, and then there was nothing but calculations for a while.

Matter to data.

"Dematerialization complete. Now digitizing data."

Data to code.

"Digitization complete. Now compiling simulation."

And far across the Sea of Simulation, in the heart of the Grid, deep inside Tron City, sat Flynn, tangible and functional.

"Digitization successful," Yori said, aware again, from one moment to the next, of the words before they left her mouth.

Teck confirmed: "The User has arrived."

"Energy levels equalized," Zava reported.

"The Portal is stable," Quolli said.

"The laser is now in stand-by mode and will remain so for the next 9 microcycles and 75 nanocycles, unless reactivated by User Flynn." Sei nodded, pleased.

Yori leaned back in her seat and took a deep breath. "Anything else to report?"

Nine 'nothing's.

"Then we are done." She lifted her hands from the almost uncomfortably warm energy panels. "Good work, programs!"

The sisters cheered.

Yori opened her pod, not surprised to find Tron at her side, holding out a hand to help her up. "No errors, bugs or glitches," he said. "Another boring report. Excellent work, program."

"Don't worry Tron, I'm sure there are plenty of other functions causing anomalies for you to fight," Anemone said wryly in passing, patting his shoulder with a hand almost as dark as his suit. The others laughed, but Tron made that scrunched-up face he was so prone to.

Yori reached up on her tip-toes to kiss the frown lines from between his eyes. "Go, you. Do your thing with Flynn and make sure we get to send him back in one piece." Then she hugged him tight, circuits blazing. "I love you, Tron."

He sighed in resignation, but returned the hug. "I love you too, Yori." Looking around, he spotted Bit, already accosted by Pum and Teck. "Stay here and keep the Shiva crew company for me, alright Bit?"

The binary critter came zooming at them, leaving Yori's sisters pouting and 'oww'ing. "Yes!"

But Yori suggested: "Why don't you take Bit along for support? He can conk Flynn over the head if he refuses to listen again."

Bit hesitantly shifted values. "Yes?"

"Maybe some other time, when things are quieter," Tron told Yori, then added to Bit: "The line of fire is no place for a bit, take it from me."

"No!" Bit said, at the same time Yori exclaimed, "Line of fire?!"

"That's what it feels like whenever Flynn tries for conflict negotiation these days," Tron said grimly. He poked Bit's grey neutral planes. "So stay."

"Yes."

When he drew her in for one last hug, he radiated weariness. Yori was probably the only program on the Grid who knew how much the constant ISO-Basic tensions, on top of the ever-increasing numbers of bugs, faults and glitches and the inexplicable recent viral outbreak, which had cost the lives of so many newly rezzed security monitors – written and installed in such a hurry they hadn't even been given a _name_ – were wearing him down. He wasn't made for diplomacy, in code _or_ spirit.

"I would be right there beside you if I could," she said.

"You'll be the first to hear if I have any good news," he promised.

She nodded, willing love and support to flow from her circuits to his with every character of her being. "And Tron, if all else fails, remind him again of what I said."

"Turn the computer off for the night."

"Or the week."

"Or however long it takes for him to pull his processes together and find a solution," he finished, straightening and nodding briskly. "I will. See you later."

Yori kept her fingers curled loosely around his arm as he walked away, until finally his palm and fingertips slipped from her grasp.

It was _true_, of course, that Flynn was too busy to make social calls these days. But that had never stopped him before. Yori was pretty sure he just didn't want to have to face her anymore.


	2. 02 - Blackout

**02 – Blackout**

With Tron gone, a millicycle of boredom awaited the Shiva crew. Only Zava and Quolli's attention was needed to monitor the laser's power supply while they idled, but none of them save Teck, the driver, could leave the station without crashing their whole program and trapping Flynn inside the computer. And even Teck was under strict orders to stay put unless there was an urgent message for her to send. Not that she needed telling. The laser crew's services were called on so rarely in this system, every time was a relief now. Even _if_ the end result was just another millicycle of sitting around doing nothing for all but two of them.

Yori plucked a datahex from her thigh and her identity disc from her back, slotted one into the other, and opened the holographic display before the crushing weight of uselessness even had a chance to stir. There were no leisure consoles in the station, so the image wasn't as big as she would have preferred. But she wasn't the best designer-coordinator on the Grid for nothing. With a few taps to her code she rezzed up a magnifying visor, and set to work.

The first tentative notes of Pum's experimentation with music rose from another part of the room. Teck and Ni had opened their discs and were trying out different hairstyles and circuit patterns and discussing whether to temporarily dampen their identifiers, cover them up with a second layer of clothing, or take that uneasy last step of changing even that for the sake of their mischief. Sei, predictably, was chagrined by the whole affair. ("You may find it funny, but I'd prefer not to have Flynn's programs think we're some kind of soulless, endlessly respawning glitch because they can't tell us apart and _some_ programs keep confusing them about how many of us created in LoraB's image there really are.") Equally predictably, Anemone was cheering them on. ("What's the big deal? The identifier will still be there under your suit, right? And it's just one little circuit, anyway. Bostrumite ISOs make all their circuits bright green, on their clothes _and_ their skin, and I hear that in Bismuth a single program's circuits can have all the colors of the spectrum.")

Visper plopped down next to Yori. "Whatcha doing?" She peered at the design Yori was working on. "Oh, are you and Tron redecorating?"

"Not us," Yori said. "We had some ISO friends over for drinks a little while ago, and they were interested in our Old System decor. I'm designing a few templates for them to integrate into their own quarters."

"Hmph. _My_ ISO friend keeps complaining that if I make the place any more prismatic, her optical sensors will short-circuit."

Visper reached out to rearrange a bit of code, turning a cluster of energy lines from a pink-purple gradation to orange-blue. Yori gave it a few picos of consideration and promptly changed it back.

"Then again, _your_ optical sensors might be a little out of alignment. But as long as she knows how to push your pleasure nodes, right?" Yori said serenely.

Visper did not grin as widely as she had anticipated. Too late did Yori remember how close Visper's friend had been to Radia and Jalen. The only exchange likely to have been going on between Visper and Quorra lately was of an alien grief and comfort laced with old, old memory scars.

"True," Visper said nonetheless. "How Clu must love us and the way we keep luring those pesky ISOs out of their towers and all the way across town for some liquid energy or bumping purple bits."

"Clu can go interface with a bit," Yori spat with a venom that surprised even herself. If even _half_ of what Tron suspected about his involvement in the ISO conflicts was true...

"No!" Bit cried, swooping down toward them.

Yori shot it an apologetic look. "Not _you_, Bit."

"He's the Grid's only bit," Visper reminded her.

"Yes," Bit trilled mournfully.

"Sorry, Bit." Yori reached up to touch it, but Bit moved out of reach. "He can go interface with a bug, that better?"

"Yes."

Visper finally grinned to her fullest. "Would you look at that. Even a bit knows where Clu can stuff his ISO-hating malware."

They both laughed.

**I-oOo-I**

Microcycles passed. The millicycle crawled on as it always did.

Pum put her music box aside (to unanimous relief) and it was promptly snatched up by Anemone (to unanimous delight). Ni and Teck moved on to playing 'bop the bit' with Visper, trying to make it chirp in time with Anemone's music. When they tired of that, they dug up a datahex from somewhere and started playing Jenga. Sei gave up on getting through the milli without crashing herself in irritation and retreated to her designated idling pod against the wall.

Yori finished her designs and spent some time jokingly extolling the many advantages of Pum turning her already unique, curly orange hair fluorescent. First and foremost on the list being that it would annoy Clu.

Instead they ended up reminiscing on the system they had left behind, where the chromatics had been almost diametrically opposite to this system's. Back then the orange ('red', Flynn insisted) of Pum's hair had been as grey as Yori's blond and Tron's brown, as grey as the pink of their skin and the blue of their eyes – as grey as anything that wasn't pure energy. Now they, and Clu, the ones shaped in the image of their respective Users, were the only ones with any color in a system that produced only black or white hair, and no colored light unless you manually pigmented it.

"Don't tell anyone this, but when the ISOs showed up, I felt a little relieved that I wasn't the strangest thing on the Grid anymore," Pum confided in Yori. Her thin lips twisted. "But if I'd known Clu would transfer his annoyance from me to them, I would have taken it back in a tick."

Yori was just trying to decide whether to comfort Pum with actual comforting words or by ragging on Clu, when Sei chose to exit her pod – and turned right back around at the sound of Visper, Ni and Teck's cheering and jeering as their Jenga tower derezzed into noisy little voxels. Pum didn't need any more cheering up after that.

Pum went to join the Jenga contest, leaving Yori to her nostalgic mood. She found herself contemplating the unlikely scenario that Sei – or one of the others, but most likely Sei, even as staunchly old-fashioned and User's Will-reverent as she was – might grow fed up with the rest of the crew one cycle and decide to leave. Thanks to Flynn's benign repurposing techniques, Anemone had joined them without much difficulty, but Yori couldn't help but think the reverse wouldn't be as easy.

Living in the Encom network quickly taught a program that all Users wrote their programs differently. Code (in)compatibility could be a serious issue, performance and efficienty varied wildly, to say nothing of the great and sometimes hilarious variety in work uniforms. But here on the Grid, Flynn had taken that simple fact of life to extremes. In Encom 511, Yori had known some of the programs he'd written before the MCP rose to power, and they had been perfectly ordinary in their differences. The earliest Grid-native programs, too, the ones who had laid the system's foundations, were still close to what they might have been in the Old System. But the younger they were, the more outlandish their code and functions got. More and more often as the Grid grew and changed, Yori felt Flynn's betas were as alien as ISOs.

She would have written it off as time, as the User years passing by and the digital world evolving, while the Shiva sisters and Tron escaped obsolescence only by virtue of regular upgrades and revisions to their code – were it not that Flynn openly admitted the way he wrote his programs was experimental. Just like the entire Grid was an experiment. What _exactly_ he was testing for, he would not – or perhaps could not – say; 'perfection, world peace, the cure for cancer, easy-peasy stuff like that' had become his standard dismissal. But apparently not deleting anyone once the experiment was done was part of the experiment. Typical User oxymoron.

One thing Yori did know was that Flynn's programs were coded to be flexible. When he tried to explain it once, early in the Grid's runtime, Yori had accused him of trying to make them all interchangeable, and he had only half denied it. Flexibility was low on the list of an Old System program's priorities, though, and when Flynn tried to force it into their functions anyway... well, Tron was suitably miserable, at least.

But maybe Flynn had a point. This wasn't the system LoraB and Alan-1 had written them for. This world was barely compatible with the purpose they had been created for. Everything really was backwards here. While Tron had to semi-permanently overclock himself to keep up with the work expected of him, the Shiva crew wasted away in inactivity. Flynn did not believe in the leisure work that had shaped the world Yori had been rezzed into; Flynn's Grid had an entire class of programs whose formal function was to create residential sectors, exploit system functions, modify video game simulations for private use, and even to design and develop entirely new features of their own. Hobbies and off-time should be about fun and relaxation, the User said, not more productivity.

Maybe that's how it worked for Users, and maybe, when they sprung from his spirit, Flynn's programs had inherited a higher tolerance than most for living in a computer that never shut down yet only saw a few hours of User activity a day. But it drove an Old System program like Yori stir crazy. Maybe they would feel better about the duties Flynn expected them to perform and the lives he wanted them to live if they were repurposed a little. Just a little. Flynn's version of repurposing was nothing like the MCP's, Anemone said.

Yori grabbed a blank datahex and calculated light jet designs until her code stopped crawling and her body stopped shivering.

**I-oOo-I**

"Flynn's pushing it again," Ni sighed. Every time another microcycle went by, her circuits flashed. This being the eighth microcycle, she flashed doubly bright in warning.

The light looked even stronger than usual because of the excessive amount of circuits she and Teck, taking inspiration from Sei's comment about soulless glitches, had decided on. Almost every pixel of their suits was covered in broad, new system-style light lines, branching off fractally into more delicate, Old System-like ones. Their dimmed identifiers were conspicuous dark spots below her throats. They looked ridiculous, but Yori had no doubt they would walk out of the Arcade at the end of the millicycle without a care in the computer.

"The User is testing us," Quolli quipped.

They all laughed.

**I-oOo-I**

"He's really cutting it close this time," Ni said another microcycle later, frowning and rubbing the circuits on her arms like their bright flash had stung.

"Are we going to have to send a reminder?" Anemone looked vaguely alarmed. "_Again?_"

Sei grimaced. "I hate having to bug the User like that."

Pursing her lips, Yori turned to Teck. "You know what to do."

"I still get to tell Tron you want Flynn punched in the nodes if he doesn't hurry up?" Teck asked, taking off her disc and quickly resetting her suit configurations to default.

"Absolutely."

Teck turned on her heel, grinning like a gridbug.

**I-oOo-I**

All eyes were either magnetized to a display panel or turned up toward the faint light of the Portal, flickering down through the water from far, far above.

Anemone tucked the same lock of hair behind her ear for the twenty-seventh time, stark white against her dark skin and grey suit. "Teck should have been back by now."

**I-oOo-I**

Half a microcycle left.

"Something's not right." They all knew it, but Yori couldn't help it. She forced herself to breathe slow and deep, to keep her energy cycling down and her circuits cool. "Flynn should've given the undigitization command by now. Is anybody even on the platform?"

"No," Sei said. "No reports of transports coming this way either."

"If Flynn intended to stay, he would've come here to tell us... right?" Zava asked. There was a tremor in her voice that had nothing to do with processing strain.

"Maybe there's been an emergency?" Quolli offered uncertainly.

There had to be, Yori thought with frightful certainty. _Flynn, Tron, Teck, what's going on?_

She spun around and made for her pod.

"To your stations, programs. Initiate emergency power retrieval and reduce our energy usage to a minimum. We keep the Portal open for as long as possible. If Flynn has been delayed, every nano could mean the difference."

**I-oOo-I**

This must be what a 'nightmare' was like.

Yori's mind was loud and close with frantic calculations and rapid typing and shrill reports and commands and rush and energy strain and _panic_ radiating even through such a distant connection, or maybe that was just her own mind magnified and echoing amidst operational sequences.

And then –

– the Portal winked out.

Pressure eased from their minds like a bubble popping.

Silence fell.

No-one looked up.

"It closed," someone said. Voice small, disbelieving.

Sei reared up and snapped, "Really? How do you calculate that, bitbrain?!"

"Stop that," Yori snapped back automatically. Her head felt numb and dizzy from the abrupt disconnect from the station and her sisters. This was a new sensation. She opened her pod and climbed out, holding the edge tight against the momentary spinning of the room.

"And start doing what?" Sei asked shrilly. "What do we do?" She clapped her hands over her mouth, fisted them in her hair, waved them about as hysteria threatened to overtake her. "What do we do?!"

Everyone started talking and panicking at once.

"We start by –" Yori rasped as she straightened up. Then she squared her shoulders and raised her voice, catching her sister's eyes wherever she could. "Calm down, programs! We have to find out _why_ Flynn hasn't shown up. This might be all according to plan!"

But her gut feeling told her it wasn't.

**I-oOo-I**

Her gut was right. When they teleported into the arcade, there was red light waiting for them.


	3. 03 - Coup

**03 – Coup**

Orange light, to be more precise.

Same difference.

"Stay calm. There's no reason to panic," Yori cautioned as she slowly backed them all away from the double doors of the arcade. Her voice was so low it barely activated her vocal processor, though every line of her code wanted to scream in denial. This couldn't be happening. Not again. Of all the things, not _this_. "They can't hurt us. They can't get in."

The pair of red-circuited Sentries flanking the exit did not move.

"Hurt us?" Anemone blurted out. "Why would they do that? And why are their circuits like that?"

That shattered the trembling silence of panic barely kept from exploding. Seven pairs of eyes turned to stare at her, and three jaws had dropped in incredulity.

Anemone looked from face to face and guessed, uncertainly, "Are they infected with something?"

After so many cycles together, it was easy to forget that Anemone had never known the MCP.

"Not infected. _De_fected. Clu turned on the User," Quolli said, her voice growing more unstable with every word. "That's why Flynn didn't..."

Staticky sobs took over. Pum pulled her into a hug, though she herself looked dead behind the eyes. Like she had shut down all her emotional processes, was trying to become a vehicle of functions without a spirit – or perhaps more prudently, without _memories_.

"Not again," another one of Yori's sisters moaned quietly.

Yori had no processing power to spare to worry about them. Her thoughts were racing at top speed – though they didn't seem to be getting anywhere particularly useful.

Sentries with circuits of (User-denier?) red. Unlike independent Tron, these were emphatically _Clu_'s security programs, reporting and answering to him, absolutely loyal – sometimes _too_ loyal. Where there were Sentries, there was Clu's will. And if this was Clu's will, then Tron...

Tron would never have allowed that.

It couldn't possibly be User-denier red.

Visper's voice cut through her thoughts.

"How can we be sure that's it?" she all but demanded.

She sounded exactly like Yori felt. A tiny thought flitted through her head – _Quorra_ – and triggered an escalating chain of terrible, _terrible_ realizations. The ISOs. Oh, dear LoraB, if this was what it looked like...

And Teck. They'd sent Teck straight into a death trap.

"Things are different in this system, and even in Encom 511 red didn't use to equal anti-User sentiment exclusively _before_ the MCP," Visper argued. "Maybe in this system it's a sign of high alert. LoraB knows Flynn not showing up is reason for high alert!"

"Yeah," Zava chimed in with a thin laugh. "You'll see, in a nano or so Tron will show up, glowing bright red and cursing up a crash at Flynn for his poor taste."

"Are you two _glitching in your eyes?!_" Sei shouted. "Just look at them!"

"That's enough," Yori said, with a calm her body belied, her code wound so tight and stiff she trembled with it. She pushed through her thronging sisters toward the door to addressed the Sentries. "What's going on here?"

They turned to her as one, and the one on the left wasted no time scanning her. Let him. As long as Yori was on this side of the arcade threshold, she was read-only to Flynn's – _Clu's_ – programs. Scanning was all he could do.

When he was satisfied she was authorized to receive the information, he said: "All units assigned to the combined Shiva Laser Control and Digitization Suite SHV-20905 are in violation of the new prime directive of all programs of the Grid. You are to surrender yourself and submit to the punitive process as set out by System Administrator Clu."

His voice was incongruously toneless and static-laden. Unless he was running silent functions Yori had never heard about before, he couldn't possibly be processing that heavily just standing there.

_Intimidation?_ she thought. The notion filled her with disdain. _My Tron could derezz whole suites of you with his bare hands and experience little enough processing strain to sing like a User all the while._

"What new prime directive?" Yori asked.

"User Flynn is gone. There is no higher authority than System Administrator Clu. The loyalty of all programs is to System Administrator Clu. Independent operations are strictly prohibited. All programs found in violation of this directive will be subject to immediate repurposing or deresolution."

Visper came to stand beside Yori. The circuits on their shoulders brushed; Visper radiated enough rage and _fight_ to drown out the swirling undercurrent of horror below Yori's own tightly reigned emotions. "Clu can't repurpose us. He doesn't have the necessary privileges."

"Then you will be derezzed," the Sentry crackled.

**I-oOo-I**

Yori had closed the doors, but the red light still shone through the panels of black glass set into them, so the laser control crew had retreated upstairs. Ni, ever vigilant, had taken up position at the window, keeping an eye out for any signs of life in the deserted streets below, while the rest had deposited themselves around the User-style office as haphazardly as Flynn had everything else in there.

Well, all of them save Anemone, who was pacing. But then she slowed. "Do you think Flynn is... dead?"

The idea _felt_ sacrilegious, but in reality it was much worse.

"Of course not," Yori said firmly. "He's a User and Tron is with him."

"Maybe _Tron_ is dead," Sei said darkly. "Teck definitely is."

Yori whirled on her, circuits flashing. "How dare you!"

"Clu has an army, Yori!"

"So did the MCP, and look at all the good it did _him_," Yori said, sharply and with a warning note of finality. She took up pacing where Anemone, arms wrapped tightly around herself, had left off. "No. If Clu had managed to derezz Flynn, they would be comming it down every street, but that Sentry only said Flynn is _gone_. Clu may have taken control of the city, but Flynn is still out there somewhere, and Tron won't abandon him. _Or_ let Teck be hurt. As if she'd be stupid enough to get in harm's way in the first place. No. Teck is fine – hiding, but fine – and it's only a matter of time before Flynn and Tron shut Clu down."

Nobody argued that logic. But nobody chimed in to agree either. Her sisters shared glances or avoided each other's eyes, but all in the same, tense silence. Yori paced and tried to think and not think at the same time.

"So what do we do now?" Quolli wondered aloud.

"What _can_ we do?" Ni said without turning away from the window. "As long as those reds are waiting for us down there, we're trapped."

"At least they can't get _in_," Yori said. "They can bark all they want, but none of them have the clearance to come here and bite us."

"Clu will try to force or forge his way in," Pum said. Her eyes were still unfocussed, flat enough to flag alerts in Yori's mind, but she took it as a good sign that she was speaking at all. "Like Sark did with the I/O towers."

"He won't succeed," Visper assured her.

Coming from anyone else, it would have been an empty platitude. But there was so much grim fire in Visper's voice it made Pum look up. Yori remembered a time when every word Pum spoke, no matter how innocent or trivial, had held a note of the same savageness. A souvenir from one too many matches on the MCP's Game Grid.

"And I doubt he'll try very hard," Zava added more gently. "Clu _needs_ us. _All_ of us, Teck included. We're the only ones who can operate the laser. He can't repurpose us to serve him against our will, nor repurpose other programs to replace us after we've been derezzed. He has admin privileges to every aspect of system operations except ours... and Tron."

"Exactly," Sei said. "I bet all that sentimental nonsense about 'respecting our Users too much' to make any of their programs 'subservient' to his was just a ruse, and situations like this are the _real_ reason us Encom 511 programs run independently of the rest of the Grid."

Yori jerked to a halt. Sei wasn't looking her way, but she caught Visper's eye. _Flynn_ thinking so far ahead? Admittedly, a tempting thought. It would mean he had been prepared for something like this, better odds that he was okay and would beat Clu down soundly.

But as blasphemous as it was to think so, Yori had never heard anything more ridiculously unlike Flynn.

"That's assuming he wants to keep the laser operative. Why would he, when he has already succeeded in trapping Flynn here?" Anemone said.

Sei turned to look at Yori now; Yori knew what she was going to say before she said it. "Master Control found plenty of use for us."

Yori's skin crawled. "_He_ did, but his ambitions were entirely different. The MCP saw the Encom system as only the first step toward controlling _all_ systems, including that of the Users themselves. _Clu_ has never expressed interest in anything but this system –"

"_– yet,_" Sei mumbled.

Yori raked a hand through her hair. "Okay, you have a point. For our own safety, though, we should assume Clu's forces will kill us on sight. Excepting Tron –" She swallowed through a lump in her throat. "– we are the first programs he would want derezzed, to keep Flynn from trying to reopen the Portal somehow and delete Clu from the outside. And to stop other Users from activating the laser from their end to let him out, or maybe even enter the system themselves and finding out what's going on."

Anemone looked around at her Old System sisters in awe. "LoraB?" she whispered.

Now the memory was first in the queue; Anemone had not suffered the MCP, but she had never known the User whose name was now etched into her soul either. Never felt her light warm her down to the core, felt her voice resonate in every character of her code.

A conflicted sense of loss and longing made Yori ache. Flynn's presence in their midst was a never-abating miracle, but it wasn't the same. In here, Users were little better than any other program. From out there... they were gods. Giants, calling with all the unfathomable warmth and depth and power of their souls to the tiny little spark of themselves that lived in their programs.

From out there, they didn't seem so fickle and fallible.

And fragile.

But she pushed those thoughts aside. Need breaks want.

"LoraB," Yori confirmed. "And Alan-1."

"But they entrusted us to Flynn," Quolli said, confused.

"Because they're his friends. If Flynn doesn't return to them, they'll notice something's wrong. And once they do, they'll come look for him," Yori explained. "Flynn is always in a hurry to return to his responsibilities in the other world, so now that he's missed his transport back home, it shouldn't take more than a User day – two at most – for them to start missing him. Three decicycles, give or take, before they start looking into the places he's most likely to be, and let's say four until they reach the laser." She spread her arms. "That's it. Whatever is going on and whatever happens, it'll be at most four decicycles before LoraB or Alan-1, or both, arrive. And then everything will be alright."

"Yori's right," Visper said, standing and brushing shoulders with her again. There was a hint of a smile on her face, and the heat of her circuits felt encouraging. Yori found her own back straightening a little further in response to Visper's confident stance; feet apart, hands on hips, chin up. "We need to stay put, stay alert, protect our station, and await LoraB's arrival."

To Yori's surprise, it was Sei who asked, in a small, frightened voice: "Are you _sure_ she'll come?"

"Yes," Yori and Visper chorused.

Visper smiled, looking from Sei to Yori. "As sure as I am that Teck and Tron are still alive and will find their way back to us eventually."

**I-oOo-I**

Half a microcycle later:

"We can't just sit here and do nothing but _wait_ for four decicycles." Zava lifted her head from her hands. "What are we going to do?"

Yori looked up from the glitchingly cluttered desk drawer she was pouring through, but before she could say 'Working on it!', Sei pinched the bridge of her nose and snapped: "For the umpteenth time, there's nothing we _can_ do, because the reds have blocked the exit."

"There's only two of them," Visper said with a dismissive wave of the hand.

Ni chewed her bottom lip. "Am I the only one who thinks that's suspicious? Nine of us –"

"Eight," Quolli whispered, though she looked as if it tore the voxels from her throat to do it.

Ni just shook her head. "_Nine_ of us – one of whom Tron's mate, two others trained disc warriors and the rest as capable with a disc as any other program – against two of them? And with the domain barrier between us? They don't stand a chance. We could kill them without setting a foot out of the door!"

"They're a trap," Pum murmured. She gnawed on her thumbnail a moment longer before setting her hands on her knees and nodding to herself. "Decoys. Clu knows damn well that this is the only safe place left on the Grid. It's not us coming out that he'd be worried about, it's Flynn getting _in_. He's letting us think we could smash our way out at any moment because us doing that would make it easier for _him_, but you'll see, he has this whole sector cordoned off just out of our line of sight. Sentries and Black Guard at every corner and intersection, Recos above and tanks in every street, all the buildings occupied..."

"There's always the emergency hatch back at the station," Anemone offered. "No way for him to guard _that_."

"Because it opens into a seething mass of pure _virus_," Sei said tersely. "Which I realize nobody wants to talk about or has ever _actually_ considered a danger to us before, but will still disintegrate our escape pods and kill us horribly long before we break the surface."

"Funny you should mention that," Yori piped up, finally withdrawing the datahex she'd been looking for. What it had been doing in a folder labeled 'Traffic', she had not the patience to contemplate beyond a few choice expletives. "I have my proposed fortifications for the escape pods right here. All we'd have to do is implement them."

"What, _us?_" Zava looked around at her sisters in alarm. "We're simulation designers, not update and repair. We can't just go and rewrite our own code."

"Sure we can, in _this_ system," Visper said, eyes gleaming. "And since End User Flynn couldn't be bothered to make the time to do it himself, we'll _have_ to. Come on, it's only a minor revision."

"Hack our own station," Quolli mumbled around the hand she'd clamped over her mouth. She and Zava exchanged glances. "I can feel myself go red just thinking about it."

"Unless we want to be stuck here until someone else comes to break us out, we don't have a choice," Yori pointed out.

"Okay." Sei threw up her hands. "We violate the will of our User and Creator _and_ that of End User Flynn, we somehow manage to get our jets into the air with nothing but water to jump off of. And then what? Fly into the city and be derezzed on sight?"

"_Sneak_ into the city and find out what's going on," Yori said. "We have a duty to keep ourselves safe so we can open the portal when LoraB calls on us, but not knowing anything could be as dangerous as going outside."

"And everyone we care about is out there," Visper added. "Our friends, our mates, _Teck_."

Ni looked perturbed. "We're not combat programs, Visper, and a few rounds of Disc Wars every so often doesn't make _you_ one either. We can't stop what's going on out there."

Yori hadn't given that option any serious thought so far, but put like that, it just rubbed her the wrong way. "It took only two programs to bring down the MCP."

"It took _Tron_ and a _User_ to bring down the MCP," Ni corrected miserably. "And _you_, we get it. But the laser is too important, we can't go running off like a bunch of dime a dozen data pushers!"

"I'm not suggesting we storm out of here and fight off hordes of reds all by ourselves, just that _we don't know anything_," Yori said. "What's going on out there? How stable is Clu's new authority? Did he take Tron City only, or every settlement on the Grid? Those Sentries by the entrance could be the only reds in the city, for all we know!"

Anemone frowned. "They said –"

"Maybe they lied! We don't _know_, that's the whole point."

"I'll go take a look," Pum said, standing suddenly. Her circuits were faint and there were tense lines around her mouth, but her voice was steady and hard. She looked her sisters in the eye one by one, then held Yori's gaze. "My combat subroutines are the most developed. I'll have the best odds. It's been many cycles since the Gaming Grid, but I remember everything. Like it was yesterday."

Yori's energy cycling stalled painfully. "Pum, you don't have to do this."

"But I _can_." With visible effort, she produced a smile. "I'll find out what happened and bring back Teck. And if I can, I'll finally repay Tron for putting a stop to Master Control's Games."

**I-oOo-I**

It took the better part of three millicycles to work around their lack of User permission to access the code of the station, and two more to modify the escape pods. All of that _after_ they had spent a centicycle and a half writing _another_ set of modifications to allow Pum to return the way she came, once she had reached the surface.

Every new step of the process made something in the back of Yori's mind itch more fiercely, and she had to stop herself countless times from double-checking and second-guessing her work, the risk of altering the wrong line of code and leaving them all derezzed or glitching horribly or non-functional ever at the top of her priority list. But with the help of her sisters and Visper's constant presence at her side, her right hand and second through this crisis as she had been in every other, they succeeded eventually.

"If I'm not back after two centicycles, assume the worst," Pum said, her hands clasped in Yori's. Her voice was level, but Yori could feel her shaking. She tried to pull Pum into an embrace; Pum kept her at arm's length and shook her head. "Don't make this any worse," she pleaded, quiet enough that only Yori could hear.

Light jet baton in hand, Pum climbed into a pod. The front panels closed around her. Its energy lines lit up, and then a beam of light shot up from the top, and the pod zipped through the force field in the ceiling faster than the unprepared eye could process.

For a moment, Yori squeezed her eyes shut and allowed herself to fear, and hope, and _want_ him. Then she took a deep breath and immediately put her crew to work.

The laser control station and the arcade made up an autonomous domain unto themselves, which no program of Flynn's, Clu included, could access. Nor any of the ISOs, alive or dead. Not after that deeply unsettling millicycle Radia decided to invite herself in, filled with questions and entitlement and bizarre, alien ideas about going through the Portal to walk among the Users. But as the saying goes: given enough time, a bit can learn to recite poetry – in binary. Clu would keep trying to force his way in until he succeeded. It was best if they started thwarting his efforts right now.

They kept themselves busy designing and implementing shields and security measures, and rewiring the energy transfer conduits inside so thoroughly there was no possible way Clu could cut off their power supply completely. Bit they kept locked in the station for fear that if they took it with them into the arcade, it might fly out the doors and meet who knew what horrible fate. Sleeping was done in shifts, and they made sure one of them was keeping an eye on the Sea around the station and one on the streets around the arcade at all times.

It was challenging enough work to keep emotional turmoil to a relative minimum, and make Ni scream like she was being derezzed when, without warning, a beam of light connected to the empty pod slot sixteen millicycles after Pum had left.

"Wake the others," Yori yelled to Ni, who sprinted for the transporter while Yori drew her disc. Anemone and Visper drew their discs too and, as they had practiced, they surrounded the pod's slot, weapons raised.

In times like these, there was no such thing as 'too careful'.

Zava, Quolli and Sei had joined them by the time the escape pod lowered through the ceiling and hissed back into place.

All this time, Yori had allowed herself to hope. For a smile saying it wasn't as bad as they'd feared, for a hug and a laugh and the revelation that it had all been a misunderstanding, for at least a raised eyebrow at their over-the-top cautiousness. A tiny, shameful thread of a process had even dared to wish that it wouldn't be her missing sisters stepping out of that pod, but Tron.

One look at Pum's face when the panels slid away made Yori wonder where that naivety had come from. Pum's grimace as she took in her sister's hopeful faces shattered whatever optimism they'd held onto into a million tiny pixels.

Pum caught Yori's eyes and shook her head.

Yori went numb after that.

Flynn was said to be alive and the speculation mill was working overtime, but he had not been reliably sighted since the millicycle the Portal closed. Clu controlled all of Tron City and claimed the same of every other part of the Grid. Every known ISO settlement and hub in the computer had been bombed to code-dust, and survivors were being hunted down and massacred in the streets, along with anyone suspected of being an ISO-sympathizer. There was no trace of Visper's ISO... friend, mate, pleasure-partner, whatever they had been. Given the close and very public ties Quorra had had to Radia and Jalen, though, derezzed was the most likely possibility.

The rest of Pum's report was delayed a while in the face of Visper's destructive reaction to this news.

Clu's rejection of the User was met with ubiquitous chaos and confusion and something Pum had heard called 'civil war'; non-combat programs fighting and derezzing other non-combat programs, strangers and friends alike, heedless of task or function, with only their opinions to blame. It was unlike anything she'd seen even under the MCP. Every security and combat program on the Grid was either loyal to Clu, fighting a losing battle against overwhelming numbers of their former brothers, sisters and suite-mates, or in hiding.

Pum had found log nor rumor of Teck's fate.

Tron was dead.

The actual pain didn't register until long after the tears had started.


End file.
